Leak Reported at Soviet Nuclear Plant
An accident at the Soviet Union’s biggest nuclear plant, criticized for its safety record, caused a leak from a reservoir but there was no radioactive pollution, a Lithuanian journalist said Friday.
The journalist from Lithuania’s Elta news agency said the accident occurred Wednesday evening at the Ignalina power station in the east of the Baltic republic. Two fires last year caused temporary closures at the plant.
The journalist quoted the plant’s director, Anatoly Khromchenko, as saying that a fuel “cassette” had been dropped during reloading in the station’s first reactor, punching a hole in the floor of the storage reservoir.
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